Wednesday, 24 May 2017

Real Occultism in RPGS: How to Identify Crazy Wizards by Their Occult Team

I haven't done one of these in a long
time, but long-time readers may recall I have done a whole series of
entries (archived here) that detail how to incorporate elements of
real occultism in your modern occult/horror RPGs. Today, I'm looking
less at the theory, practices or mechanics of magick, and more at the
social side of occultism. Just like in Harry Potter has Gryffindor
and Slytherin, modern wizards have their own rival houses that are
very different in look, attitude and ideas. They're all nuts,
though. I should know, because I am one. So let's take a jesting look
at the four major teams of the modern western occult scene, so that
you can learn how to correctly interpret them in your occult RPG
game!

1. Traditional/Grimoire Ceremonial
Magicians

These guys are
old-schoolers. They're divided between wizards that think magic
should be done the 19th Century way, versus those who think it should
be done the 15th Century way (and a couple who want it the 4th
Century way). Regardless, they think new stuff is crap, and
constantly showboat online about who's doing it the more old-school
way. I say online because 99% of them never actually interact with
anyone outside a computer screen.

Their magic
involves trying to meticulously recreate the complicated tools and
methods of Victorian or Medieval magicians, which sometimes involves
a ridiculous amount of hand-crafting weird tools.

Some of them ain't got no time for
that, so they just buy them. There's a whole Etsy industry catering
to these guys.

It's especially funny because medieval
magic is almost entirely Christian or Jewish, and almost none of
these guys are. The whole "super authentic" thing goes out
the window if you don't really mean all those psalms you're supposed
to pray before invoking angels. But it gives you internet props
anyways.

Hallmarks: Least likely to ever
meet you in person. Most likely to have beards but dress like a
square.

2. Thelemites

The modern wizards. Thelemites are
magicians who use the techniques of Aleister Crowley, the greatest
magician of the 20th century.

Like their founder, they enjoy being
shit-disturbers, but fundamentally have disciplined views on magick.
That said, 90% of Thelemites don't actually do very much magic, just
read books and look for some fleeting partner to have "sex
magic" with (Thelema is big on sex magic, though actually very few of them do that either).

As occult libertarians, they're big
into free love, free drugs, and free thought; but they're also big on
trying to spook the normies (and Wiccans). They can either be the
life of the party, or totally insufferable know-it-alls.

Hallmarks: Most likely to wear
black. Most likely to dig Alan Moore.
Most likely to hit on Wiccan chicks at a Pagan festival.

3. Chaos Magicians

Chaos magicians are the post-modern
magicians. It started as a kind of revolt against Thelema because the
Crowley stuff was too "square" (by which they really mean "too hard"). Some of the
big names in this movement are decent, because they're disciplined
and studied other stuff. But 90% of Chaos-magicians have done
anything at all outside of acting all pomo.

Granted, at least most of them have
done some magic. Unfortunately most of them have only ever done one
kind of magic: the one-trick-pony of Chaos Magic that involves
masturbating over a sigil. Not even some ancient sigil, carefully selected and to deal with significant crises (where, in fact, the use of sexual energy to power the operation, even if just by masturbation, is traditional), but just one you
made up yourself this morning for, usually for any old kind of bullshit.

(this is why people laugh at you, Chaos-magick wankers)

They also try to claim magic is
scientific, by blurting out so much nonsense about quantum physics it
would make Sam Harris' brain explode and Deepak Chopra blush. Then
right after they tell you how scientific it all is, they tell you
that it totally makes sense to invoke Wonder Woman in a ritual
instead of Athena.

Hallmarks: Most likely to dress
like a reject from an '80s movie. Most likely to dig Grant Morrison.
Most likely to practice all their sex-magic solo.

4. Meme Magicians

Meme magick is post-post-modern magick.
It is the art and science of creating, posting, and spreading memes
to create change in your life and the world. It's either complete and
total bullcrap or the most powerful sorcery of our modern era.
Either way, it got Trump elected.

(Praise Kek!)

Meme Magicians operate through the
power of sigils, like Chaos Magick, but instead of wanking over them, they use the power of the internet: their sigils are memes. The more
popular a meme becomes, the more powerful it becomes. Of course, a
lot of Meme Magicians are ALSO probably wanking over their sigils,
because... you know, the internet.

So memes to them are a kind of
hypersigil, and a meme that gets enough fame can achieve a kind of
life of its own, or even a consciousness of its own. This is not
some kind of new idea, it's called an Egregore, and it's essentially
the artificial creation of a spirit through the application of
group/collective consciousness. Egregores can be quite powerful, and
useful, but can also sometimes be difficult to keep under control if
they get TOO big. The most famous Meme Magick example of an egregore
is of course Pepe the Frog. He went from being a goofy meme to beinga manifestation of an ancient Egyptian god, Kek.

These memes can spill over to have
effects on the real world. Some are very personal and can have very
personal effects, changing things in small ways. Others can have
massive world-changing effects. The most obvious case of this was
the meme magick that helped the election of Donald Trump.

Other examples include the
"Slenderman", and the "He'll be fine" meme, which
is a meme that can be capable of killing celebrities. It may have
been what killed Lemmy Kilmister.

Advanced Meme Magicians combine online
memes, symbols of their intent, and more traditional occult symbols,
as seen in this Jupiter Trump-Pusheen Sigil:

Obviously, you will now want to ask
"are you fucking kidding me?", and the answer is yes.

But
kidding doesn't make it not real. Meme Magicians work on the basis of
humor, to an even greater degree than the chaos magicians did before
them, and the Thelemites did before them (old-school ceremonial
magicians, on the other hand, tend to rely on being super-serious).
The fact that even most meme magicians don't seem to take themselves
seriously doesn't actually mean they aren't being 'real' meme
magicians: meme magicians straddle a strange line between being
dead-serious and totally fucking with you.

Hallmarks: Most likely to perform
magick in their underwear. Most likely to weigh as much as two normal
men or be stick-thin. Least likely to bathe daily. Most likely to
want to Make America Great Again. Most likely to create an egregore
to use for a waifu.